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THE  MORALITY  OF  WOMAN 


THE  MORALITY  OF 
WOMAN 

AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

AUTHORIZED  TRANSLATION  FROM  THE  SWEDISH 

OF 

ELLEN   KEY 

BY 

MAMAH'BOUTON  BORTHWICK 


THE  RALPH  FLETCHER  SEYMOUR  CO. 

FINE  ARTS  BUILDING 

CHICAGO 


COPYRIGHT,  1911 

BY 

THE  RALPH  FLETCHER  SEYMOUR  CO. 

CHICAGO 


A    > .—. ) ) 


CONTENTS 

THE  MORALITY  OF  WOMAN     .  .  page   5 

THE  WOMAN  OF  THE  FUTURE  .  "39 

THE  CONVENTIONAL  WOMAN  .  "51 


1714408   1 


THE  MORALITY  OF  WOMAN 

(TRANSLATED  FROM  THE  SWEDISH) 

^'The  law  condemns  to  be  hung  those  who 
counterfeit  banknotes;  a  measure  necessary 
for  the  public  welfare.  But  he  who  coun- 
terfeits love,  that  is  to  say:  he  who,  for  a 
thousand  other  reasons  but  not  for  love, 
unites  himself  to  one  whom  he-  does  not 
love  and  creates  thus  a  family  circle 
unworthy  of  that  name  —  does  not  he 
indeed  commit  a  crime  whose  extent  and 
incalculable  results  in  the  present  and  in 
the  future,  disseminate  far  more  terrible 
unhappiness  than  the  counterfeiting  of  mil- 
lions of  banknotes!'^ 

C.  J.  L.  Almquist. 

THE  simplest  formula  for  the 
new  conception  of  morality, 
which  is  beginning  to  be 
opposed  to  moral  dogma  still 
esteemed  by  all  society,  but 
especially  by  women,  might  be  summed 
up  in  these  words: 

Love  is  moral  even  without  legal  mar- 
riage, but  marriage  is  immoral  without 
love.  1 


The  customary  objection  to  this  tenet 
is  that  those  who  propose  it  forget  all 
other  ethical  duties  and  legitimate  feelings 
in  order  to  make  the  sex  relationship  the 
center  of  existence,  and  love  the  sole 
decisive  point  of  view  in  questions  con- 
cerning this  relationship.  But  if  we 
except  the  struggle  for  existence  —  which 
indeed  must  be  called  not  a  relationship  of 
life  but  a  condition  of  life  —  what  then 
can  be  more  central  for  man,  than  a  condi- 
tion decreed  by  the  laws  of  earthly  life  — 
the  cause  of  his  own  origin?  Can  one 
imagine  a  moment  which  penetrates  more 
deeply  his  whole  being? 

That  many  men  live  content  without 
the  happiness  of  love,  that  others  after 
they  attain  it  seek  a  new  end  for  their 
activity,  proves  nothing  against  the  truth 
of  the  experience  that  for  men  in  general 
the  erotic  relation  between  man  and 
woman  becomes  the  deepest  life  determin- 
ing factor,  whether  negatively,  because 
they  are  deprived  of  this  relation  or 
because  they  formed  it  unhappily;  or  posi- 
tively, because  they  have  found  therein  the 
fullness  of  life. 


The  depreciation  for  mankind  of  the 
significance  of  the  sex  relation  and  of  the 
significance  of  love  in  the  sex  relation 
brings  into  it  all  the  immorality  still 
imposed  by  conventionalism  as  morality. 

We  no  longer  consider,  as  in  our 
mother's  youth,  ignorance  of  the  side  of 
life  which  concerns  the  propagation  of  the 
race  the  essential  condition  of  womanly 
purity.  But  the  conventional  idea  of 
purity  still  maintains  that  the  untouched 
condition  of  the  senses  belongs  to  this  con- 
ception. And  it  would  be  right,  if  the 
distinction  were  made  between  purity  and 
chastity.  *  Purity  is  the  new-fallen  snow 
which  can  be  melted  or  sullied;  chastity  is 
steel  tempered  in  the  fire  by  white  heat.  \ 
For  chastity  is  only  developed  together 
with  complete  love ;  this  not  only  excludes 
equally  all  partition  among  several  but 
also  makes  a  separation  between  the  de- 
mands of  the  heart  and  the  senses  impos- 
sible. The  essence  of  chastity  is,  accord- 
ing to  George  Sand's  profound  words :  "to 
be  able  never  to  betray  the  soul  with  the 
senses  nor  the  senses  with  the  soul"  ("de 


ne  pouvoir  jamais  tromper  ni  Tame  avec 
les  sens  ni  les  sens  avec  Tame").  And  as 
absolute  consecration  is  its  distinctive 
mark,  so  is  it  also  its  demand.  This  alone 
is  the  chastity  v^hich  must  characterize 
the  family  life  and  form  in  the  future  the 
basis  of  foundation  for  the  happiness  of 
the  people. 

Literature  v^as,  therefore,  w^holly  jus- 
tified w^hen  in  the  name  of  nature  it 
attacked  the  hyperidealistic  subtlety 
w^hich  raised  the  love  of  the  heart  to  the 
highest  rank  and  made  that  of  the  senses 
the  low^est;  and  v^hen  it  desired  that  the 
woman  should  not  only  know  what  com- 
plete love  was  but  that  she  should  also 
when  she  loved  desire  that  completeness. 

Because  from  time  to  time  powerful 
voices  were  raised,  like  George  Sand's  or 
Almquist's,  calling  without  consideration 
not  only  that  marriage  immoral  which  was 
consummated  without  mutual  love  but  also 
that  marriage  immoral  which  was  con- 
tinued without  mutual  love  —  a  purer  con- 
sciousness has  awakened  in  questions 
regarding  the  conditions  of  the  genesis 


of  the  unborn  race  and  elevated  the  con- 
ditions of  the  personal  dignity  of  man  and 
woman.  So  eventually  it  will  come  to 
pass  that  no  finely  sensitive  woman  will 
become  a  mother  except  through  mutual 
love;  that  this  motherhood  sanctioned 
legally  or  not  so  sanctioned  shall  be  con- 
sidered the  only  true  motherhood,  and 
every  other  motherhood  untrue.  Thus 
will  mankind  awaken  to  such  a  feeling  of 
the  "Sanctity  of  the  generation,"  and  to 
such  an  understanding  of  the  conditions  of 
the  health,  strength  and  beauty  of  the 
race,  that  every  marriage  which  has  its 
source  in  worldly  or  merely  sensual 
motives,  or  in  reasons  of  prudence  or  in  a 
feeling  of  duty  shall  be  considered  as  Alm- 
quist  calls  it:  "A  criminal  counterfeiting 
of  the  highest  values  of  life."  And  the 
same  criminal  counterfeit  obtains  in  every 
married  life  which  is  continued  under  the 
compulsion,  the  distaste  or  the  resignation 
of  one  of  the  two.  Man  will  be  penetrated 
with  the  consciousness  that  the  whole 
ethical  conception  which  now  in  and  with 
marriage  gives  to  a  husband  or  a  wife 


rights  over  the  personahty  of  the  other, 
is  a  crude  survival  of  the  lower  periods  of 
culture;  that  everything  w^hich  is  ex- 
changed between  husband  and  wife  in 
their  life  together,  can  only  be  the  free  gift 
of  love,  can  never  be  demanded  by  one  or 
the  other  as  a  right.  Man  will  understand 
that  when  one  can  no  longer  continue  the 
life  in  love  then  this  life  must  cease;  that 
all  vows  binding  forever  the  life  of  feeling 
are  a  violence  of  one's  personality,  since 
one  cannot  be  held  accountable  for  the 
transformation  of  one's  feeling.  Even 
though  this  new  moral  ideal  should  in  the 
beginning  dissolve  many  untrue  mar- 
riages and  thus  cause  much  suffering,  yet 
all  this  suffering  is  necessary.  It  belongs 
to  the  attainment  of  the  new  erotic  ethics 
which  will  uplift  man  and  woman  in  that 
sphere  where  now  the  spirit  of  slavery  and 
of  obtuseness  under  a  holy  name  degrade 
them;  where  social  convention  sanctions 
prostitution  alongside  monogamy,  and 
vouchsafes  to  the  seducer  but  not  to  the 
seduced,  social  esteem,  calling  the  unmar- 
ried    woman    ruined    who    in     love    has 


ID 


become  a  mother,  but  the  married  woman 
respectable  who  without  love  gives  chil- 
dren to  the  man  who  has  bought  her! 

The  erotic-ethical  consciousness  of  man- 
kind cannot  be  uplifted  until  the  new  idea 
of  morality  with  all  its  consequences  is 
clearly  established. 

This  ideal  has  two  types  of  adversary. 
One  is  the  adherent  of  the  conventional 
morality;  the  other  the  supporter  of  the 
transitory  union  to  which  the  name  of 
"free  love"  is  erroneously  applied. 

Those  of  the  first  type  demand  quite  the 
same  morality  for  the  man  as  for  the 
woman.  They  assert  that  celibacy  for 
either  sex  brings  with  it  serious  difficul- 
ties. They  maintain  that  the  social  feel- 
ing of  duty,  not  mutual  love,  must  be  the 
ground  of  conjugal  fidelity.  They  call 
"pure  love"  love  untouched  by  all  that 
which  they  call  "sensuality." 

These  same  moral  dogmas  in  recent 
years  have  manifested  themselves  in  the 
effort  to  quench  all  fire,  whiten  all  burning 
red  coals,  and  drape  all  nudity  in  literature 
and  art.     The  supporters  of  this  dogma 

11 


certainly  understand  —  since,  to  begin  at  ^ 
the  beginning  they  have  surely  glanced 
into  the  Bible  and  Homer  —  that  the 
undertaking  would  be  too  vast  were  it  to 
extend  to  classic  literature.  But  all  the 
more  ardently  they  have  directed  their 
zeal  against  modern  literature  and  art. 
And  if  they  do  not  encounter  energetic 
opposition  the  fig  leaf  will  soon  among  us 
also  attest  the  fall  of  taste  and  of  the  soul. 
"Free  love"  has  also  its  fanatics  who  are 
guilty  of  quite  as  crass  excess.  They  have 
no  conception  of  soulful  and  true  devotion, 
which  they  consider  an  absurdity  or  a  con- 
ventionality under  which  human  nature 
cannot  bow  without  hypocrisy.  For  since 
experience  shows  that  lifelong  love  is  fre- 
quently an  illusion,  so,  they  say,  one  must 
not  begin  by  expecting  it !  The  so-called 
Bohemians  have  shown  as  great  mono- 
mania in  their  rotation  around  this  one 
point,  the  right  of  the  senses,  as  have  the 
zealots  of  traditional  morality  in  their 
rotation  around  their  point,  the  suppres- 
sion of  the  senses.  The  extreme  result  of 
both  would  be  retrogression  to  a  lower 


degree  of  culture ;  in  one  case  to  the  asceti- 
cism of  the  Middle  Ages,  in  the  other  to 
the  promiscuity  of  the  savage.  Both  for- 
get the  reality  of  life.  On  the  one  side 
they  ignore  this  reality  in  their  absolute 
demands  without  consideration  of  tem- 
perament or  circumstances;  in  their  asser- 
tion of  the  unqualified  moral  superiority  of 
woman  and  in  depreciation  of  the  signifi- 
cance of  love  for  the  full  harmony  of  man 
and  woman.  On  the  other  side  they  ignore 
this  reality  when  they  try  to  make  woman 
as  unrestrained  morally  as  man  has  hith- 
erto been ;  when  they  forget  all  the  suffer- 
ing of  the  new  generation  born  and  reared 
in  such  an  unrestrained  existence;  when 
they  learn  nothing  of  the  nature  of  woman 
from  the  many  younger  and  older  women 
who  live  solitary  and  yet  sound  and  useful 
lives  in  the  deep  conviction  that,  since 
they  have  not  found  the  great,  mutual 
love,  which  decides  existence,  any  union 
with  a  man  would  be  degrading  and 
unhappy.  Development  has,  because  of 
multifarious  influences  made  entirety  and 
continuity  in  love  a  greater  life  necessity 

13 


for  the  woman  of  culture  in  general  than 
for  the  man  of  the  same  intellectual  level. 
A  man,  therefore,  ordinarily  dissolves  an 
erotic  relation  without  bitterness  when  he 
has  ceased  to  love,  while  a  woman,  even 
after  her  love  has  ceased,  often  suffers 
because  the  relationship  has  not  endured 
a  lifetime. 

It  is  this  ever  increasing  peremptory- 
demand  for  erotic  completeness  of  the 
woman  of  developed  individuality  of  the 
present  time,  which  causes  her  always  to 
wish  to  more  fervently  cherish  the  person- 
ality of  the  man  as  entirely  as  it  is  her 
happiness  and  her  pride  to  be  able  to  give 
her  own.  It  is  this  demand  for  entirety 
which,  among  Germanic  peoples,  at  least, 
makes  woman  neither  desirous  nor  psy- 
chologically fitted  for  the  so-called  "free 
love."  This  is  evidently  to  be  concluded 
from  the  vicissitudes  of  those  who  have 
tried  it. 

"Free  love"  is  moreover  quite  as  sense- 
less an  expression  as  "legal  love."  Because 
no  external  command  can  call  love  into 
being   or   repress    it;    it   is   in  this  sense 

14 


always  free,  yet  as  are  all  feelings,  it  is 
bound  by  certain  psychological  laws.  If 
not,  then  it  does  not  deserve  the  name  of 
love.  It  is  with  love  as  with  the  human 
face:  though  the  individual  varieties  are 
infinite,  yet  there  are  certain  general  char- 
acteristic features  which  make  all  these 
different  faces  human  faces,  all  these  dif- 
ferent feelings  human  love.  And  in  every 
time  there  is  a  type  for  both,  which  is  rec- 
ognized as  nobler  than  the  others. 

This  noblest  type  of  love  has  been  por- 
trayed by  a  Danish  writer,*  who  endeav- 
ored to  show  that  a  conception  of  life 
founded  upon  evolution  need  not  lead  to 
laxity  in  sexual  relations.  He  shows  how 
the  erotic  feeling,  as  all  other  feelings,  has 
been  developed  from  an  incoherent,  inde- 
terminate and  indefinite  condition  to  one 
more  coherent,  determinate  and  differen- 
tiated, and  so  from  a  simple  instinct  for 
reproduction  of  the  species  has  been  finally 


*See  Viggo  Drewsen:  "En  Livsanskuelse  grundet 
paa  Elskow"  ("A  Conception  of  Life  Founded  upon 
Love")  and  "Forholdet  mellem  Maud  og  Kvinde  belyst 
gjennem  Udviklingshypothesen."  ("The  Relation  be- 
tween Man  and  Woman  in  the  Light  of  the  Hypothesis 
of  Evolution.") 

15 


transformed  to  an  entirely  personal,  inner 
love.  The  highest  type  of  this  love  is  that 
w^hich  exists  between  a  man  and  a  w^oman 
of  the  same  moral  and  intellectual  level; 
which  demands  of  necessity  reciprocal 
love  in  order  to  be  perfected,  and  can 
therefore  be  contented  with  no  other  kind 
of  reciprocal  love  than  a  corresponding 
erotic  love.  This  perfect  love  includes  the 
yearning  desire  of  both  lovers  to  become 
entirely  one  being,  to  free  each  other  and 
to  develop  each  other  to  the  greatest  per- 
fection. If  love  is  perfected  and  consum- 
mated thus  by  the  life  together,  then  can 
it  be  given  to  only  one  and  only  once  in  a 
lifetime.  This  thought  of  the  Danish 
writer  is  expressed  with  the  concise  brev- 
ity of  the  poet,  by  Bjornson,  when  he  says 
of  the  sensation  "feeling  oneself  doubled" 
in  the  beloved  one:  ''That  is  love,  all  else 
is  not  love."  This  feeling  which  liberates, 
conserves  and  deepens  the  personality, 
which  is  the  inspiration  to  noble  deeds  and 
works  of  genius,  is  the  opposite  of  the 
ephemeral,  merely  sensual  love,  which 
enslaves,  dissipates  and  lessens  the  per- 
sonality. 

16 


It  is  only  the  great  love  which  has  a 
higher  right  than  all  other  feelings  and 
which  can  establish  its  right  in  a  life. 

He  who  considers  this  love  decisive  for 
the  morality  of  such  an  erotic  union  can- 
not believe  that  external  ties  are  necessary 
to  give  ethical  value  to  this  union.  Social 
considerations,  prudence  and  feeling  for 
others  can  indeed  in  certain  cases  make 
the  legal  bond  desirable.  But  it  can  just 
as  little  give  increased  consecration  to  real 
love,  as  it  can  give  any  consecration  what- 
ever to  a  relation  in  which  this  content  is 
lacking.  And  even  if  it  would  be  too  dog- 
matic to  establish  just  the  highest  type  of 
love  as  ethical  norm  for  all  relations 
between  man  and  woman,  since  life  proves 
that  the  highest  love  is  still  as  rare  as  the 
highest  beauty,  yet  it  is  on  the  contrary 
not  premature  to  assert  that  this  love, 
legally  sanctioned  or  not,  is  moral,  and 
that  where  it  is  lacking  on  either  side,  a 
moral  ground  is  furnished  for  the  disso- 
lution of  the  relationship.  The  ever  clearer 
consciousness  that  love  can  dispense  with 
marriage   yet   marriage   cannot   dispense 

17 


with  love,  is  already  partially  recognized 
in  modern  society,  by  the  facility  of 
divorce.  And  it  is  only  a  question  of  time 
when  the  law  which  gives  to  one  person 
the  power  to  constrain  the  other  to  remain 
with  him  against  his  will,  will  be  abro- 
gated, so  contrary  is  this  possibility  to 
that  developed  conception  of  the  freedom 
of  love  —  which  is  not  at  all  the  same  as 
so-called  "free  love!" 

It  is  not  historically  true  that  it  was,  as 
has  been  asserted,  some  certain  conception 
of  morality,  some  certain  form  of  conclud- 
ing or  dissolving  marriage  which,  in  the 
last  analysis,  has  been  a  decisive  factor  in 
the  progress  or  decadence  of  peoples. 
Among  the  Jews  as  among  the  Greeks, 
among  the  Romans  as  among  our  Ger- 
manic forefathers,  at  the  most  flourishing 
period,  there  existed  many  laws  and  cus- 
toms which  were  considered  moral  that 
the  present  time  considers  immoral.  The 
decisive  thing  for  the  sound  life  of  these 
peoples  was,  that  that  which  they  consid- 
ered right  had  sovereign  power  to  bind 
them:  the  faithfulness  to  the  conception  of 

18 


duty  more  than  the  content  of  conception 
determines  the  moral  soundness  of  a  peo- 
ple. Society  is  in  danger,  not  when  the 
ideals  are  raised  but  when  they  are  lost. 
But  a  very  highly  developed  historical 
sense  is  necessary  to  see  at  the  same  time 
the  connection  and  the  difference  between 
dissolution  and  reorganization.  More- 
over it  is  necessary  to  have  the  large  view 
of  the  essentials  of  life  which  distinguishes 
the  true  poet,  the  view  which  Sophocles 
possessed  when  he  let  his  Antigone  follow 
the  higher  law  of  affection  and  commit  a 
violation  of  the  law  which  —  according  to 
the  conception  of  that  time  —  would  lead 
to  general  license  if  it  remained  unpun- 
ished. The  new  ideal  of  marriage  is  now 
being  formed  in  and  through  all  the  many 
literary  and  personal  dissensions  in  which 
it  constitutes  the  theme.  Yes,  it  is  formed 
also  in  the  midst  of  all  the  conflicts  of  life 
for  which  marriage  gives  so  much  occasion. 
It  is  true  there  are  now  married  people 
who  separate  because  from  the  very  begin- 
ning they  considered  fidelity  impossible 
and  so    did   not    even    strive  for  it.     But 


19 


many  other  divorces  have  far  more  com- 
plex, psychological  reasons.  When  tw^o 
people  are  married  young,  personal  devel- 
opment takes  often  entirely  opposite 
directions;  if  they  have  married  in  more 
mature  years,  then  their  individual  differ- 
ences, already  strongly  marked  from  the 
beginning,  make  the  problem  of  common 
life  together  difficult  of  solution.  The 
strongly  developed  sensibility  of  the  mod- 
ern individual  to  disposition,  nuances, 
variations  of  humor,  makes  a  lack  of  sym- 
pathy still  more  unendurable;  a  true  sym- 
pathy a  far  greater  source  of  joy.  The 
whole  multiplicity  of  psycho-physical 
influences  and  impressions  which  the 
members  of  a  family  exercise  upon  one 
another  for  pleasure  and  displeasure,  sym- 
pathy and  variance,  harmony  and  discord, 
are  now  in  all  relationships,  but  above  all 
in  marriage,  felt  with  greatest  intensity.  It 
is  in  those  natures  most  individually  devel- 
oped, most  refined,  for  whom  the  nuances 
of  the  married  life,  not  its  simple  primal 
colors,  signify  happiness  or  unhappiness. 
To  this  general  delicacy  of  feeling  there 

20 


is  added  especially  the  heightened  sensi- 
bility of  woman  to  the  discord  between 
that  which  she  expected  in  marriage  and 
that  which  in  reality  it  offered  her,  because 
the  union  often  lacked  the  freedom,  the 
understanding  which  her  sympathetic 
feeling  now  craves.  This  lack  of  harmony 
is  inevitable  since  the  forms  of  marriage 
have  not  even  approximately  undergone 
the  transformation  which  would  corre- 
spond to  the  individual  development  of  the 
two  beings,  of  the  woman  especially, 
whom  it  unites.  But  while  all  these  rea- 
sons, cursorily  indicated  here,  contribute 
their  part  in  the  increased  number  of 
divorces,  the  life  of  finer  feeling  creates, 
on  the  other  hand,  an  ever  more  intimate 
married  life.  There  are  married  people 
who  have  pledged  each  other  at  marriage 
full  freedom  to  dissolve  the  union  when 
either  of  them  so  wished,  and  others  who 
have  never  given  legal  form  to  their  mar- 
riage yet  realize  fully  and  richly  love  in 
"sorrow  and  in  joy,"  in  sympathetic  work 
together,  in  reciprocal,  true  devotion. 
There  have  been,  on  the  other  hand,  cham- 

21 


pions  of  so-called  "free  love"  who  were 
themselves  by  nature  such  pronounced 
believers  in  only  one  marriage  that  their 
life  was  wrecked  when  the  one  to  whom 
they  had  bound  themselves  applied  to  their 
own  case  their  own  theories.  It  is  always 
the  character  which  ultimately  decides. 
Character  can  make  the  radical  theorist  a 
moral  paragon  and  the  pillar  of  society 
resting  upon  conservative  ground  a  reed 
of  passion;  it  can  make  the  advocate  of 
egoism  sublimely  devoted  and  the  apostle 
of  Christianity  deeply  egoistic  in  his  love. 
So  many  men,  so  many  souls;  so  many 
souls,  so  many  destinies.  And  to  wish  to 
apply  to  this  whole,  complex,  manifold, 
incalculable  erotic  life,  with  its  unfathom- 
able depths,  an  immutable  ethical  stand- 
ard, when  judging  the  relationship 
between  man  and  woman,  and  to  make 
this  standard  decisive  also  for  the  ethical 
value  of  the  personality  in  other  respects 
—  is  quite  as  naive  as  the  attempt  of  a 
child  to  draw  up  in  his  little  bucket  the 
wonderful  depth  of  the  vast  storm-driven 
sea. 


22 


Love,  as  life,  will  fortunately  remain  an 
eternal  mystery  which  no  science  will  be 
able  to  penetrate  and  which  reason  cannot 
rule.  Our  only  hope  for  the  future  is  that 
man,  endowed  with  a  more  delicate  sense, 
will  listen  to  the  secrets  of  his  own  life.  A 
more  highly  developed  and  differentiated 
soul  life  will  give  him  a  surer  instinct  or  a 
keener  power  of  analysis  which  will  pre- 
vent him  from  confounding  a  passing  sen- 
timent of  sympathy,  need  of  tenderness  or 
satisfaction  of  vanity  with  a  love  which 
decides  existence.  Now,  on  the  contrary, 
many  believe  that  a  wave  of  admiration,  of 
gratitude,  or  of  pity  is  the  whole  sea;  that 
the  reflection  of  the  fire  of  another  is  the 
holy  fire  itself! 

No  one  can  with  certainty  predict  the 
final  result  of  the  profound  revolution  of 
the  feeling  and  of  the  customs  which  is 
now  taking  place.  But  one  thing  appears 
certain :  the  danger  to  the  future  of  man- 
kind can  scarcely  be  that  the  new  ideal  will 
result  in  general  license.  Rather  it  will 
lead  to  so  individual,  differentiated  and 
refined  love  that  erotic  happiness  will  be 

23 


increasingly  difficult  to  find  and  the  ideal- 
ists of  love  will  more  frequently  prefer 
celibacy  to  a  compromise  with  their 
greater  demands  for  sympathetic  love. 

The  occasional  experience,  often  only 
the  dream  of  such  a  love,  sensible  to  the 
finest  shades  of  the  soul,  to  the  most  deli- 
cate vibrations  of  the  senses  —  of  a  love 
which  is  an  all  comprehensive  tenderness, 
an  all  embracing  intimacy  —  has  already 
raised  the  erotic  demands  and  the  erotic 
existence  of  thousands  of  men  and  women 
to  a  sphere  of  more  infinite  longing,  more 
fervid  chastity  than  that  of  their  contem- 
poraries. It  is  this  experience  or  this 
dream  which  has  already  begun  to  assume 
form  in  the  art  and  literature  of  the  pres- 
ent time.  It  is  true  the  extreme  discord 
between  the  peculiar  character  of  man  and 
of  woman  has  long  been  the  favorite 
theme,  especially  in  modern  literature. 
But  among  the  wild,  discordant  tones  a 
new  leitmotiv  resounds  which  will  swell 
and  rise  and  fill  the  void  with  a  harmony, 
still  but  faintly  divined. 

One  of  the  conditions  that  this  harmony 

24 


become  as  perfect  as  possible  is  that 
woman  in  life  as  in  literature  shall  begin 
to  be  more  honest  and  man  more  eager  to 
listen  when  she  reveals  to  him  something 
of  her  own  nature.  Men  have  desired  and 
justly  that  women  should  learn  from  their 
confessions  in  regard  to  the  conflict 
between  man  and  woman.  But  woman 
because  of  the  conventional  conception  of 
womanly  purity  has  been  intimidated 
from  conceding  to  man  a  deep  insight 
into  her  erotic  life  experiences. 

Only  when  women  begin  to  tell  the 
truth  about  themselves  will  literature  uni- 
versally illuminate  the  still  unknown 
depths  of  woman's  erotic  temperament. 
To  the  present  time  it  has  been  almost 
exclusively  men  poets  who  have  made 
revelations  about  women.  The  nearer 
these  poets  have  approached  life,  the  more 
surely  have  they  seen  the  highest  expres- 
sion of  the  eternal  feminine  as  the  great 
women  poets  also  saw  it:  in  erotic  love 
and  in  mother  love.  And  it  was  the  com- 
pleteness of  her  consecration  which  was 
in  their  eyes  a  woman's  supreme  chastity. 

25 


It  is  the  great  poets  who  have  taught 
and  have  continued  to  teach  youth  to 
revere  the  ''all  powerful  Eros." 

This  is  the  only  "morality"  which  has  a 
future.  Only  by  conforming  to  this  shall 
we  gradually  succeed  in  preventing  the 
erotic  feeling  from  appearing  sometimes 
as  a  brutal  instinct  or  marriage  from  being 
founded  upon  a  fleeting  attraction. 

An  ideal  of  negative  purity  —  even 
incarnated  in  the  person  of  Jesus  —  can- 
not inflame  youth  and  therefore  cannot  in 
the  long  run  protect  him.  That  alone 
which  has  the  power  not  only  to  restrain 
but  also  to  transform  the  brutal  instinct 
is  a  conception  of  the  existence  of  a  higher 
feeling  which  belongs  to  the  same  sphere 
of  life  as  the  instinct  itself. 

To  burn  the  ideal  of  a  great  love  into 
the  soul  of  youth  in  letters  of  fire  —  that  is 
to  give  him  a  real  moral  strength.  Thus 
there  springs  up  in  man  the  ineradicable, 
invincible  instinct  that  an  erotic  relation 
can  exist  only  as  the  expression  of  a  recip- 
rocal all  comprehensive  love.  Thus  will 
youth  learn  to  consider  the  love-marriage 

26 


as  the  central  life  relation,  the  center  of 
life,  and  he  will  be  inflamed  with  the  desire 
to  develop  and  to  conserve  body  and  soul 
for  the  entrance  into  this  most  holy  thing 
in  nature,  wherein  man  and  woman  find 
their  happiness  in  creating  a  new  race  for 
happiness.  Thus  will  young  men  and 
women  in  increasing  numbers  understand 
that  their  own  happiness,  as  well  as  that 
of  the  coming  generation  will  be  the 
greater  the  more  completely  they  can  give 
their  personality  to  love.  Boys  and  girls, 
young  men  and  maidens,  men  and  women 
by  coeducation,  by  joint  labor  and  com- 
radeship will  develop  in  one  another  that 
mutual  understanding  which  will  remove 
the  enmity  between  the  sexes,  in  which 
modern  individualization  —  and  the  there- 
with increasing  demands  of  the  person- 
ality—  has  so  far  found  its  expression. 

The  usages  of  individual  homes  will 
be  differentiated,  instead  of  as  now  main- 
taining the  same  conventional  forms  for 
all  families.  After  some  generations  so 
educated,  under  the  influence  of  relation- 
ships thus  arranged,  we  shall  see  mar- 

27 


in  which  not  observation  of  a  duty  but  Hb- 
erty  itself  is  the  pledge  that  assures  fidel- 
ity. Then  will  love  be  cherished  as  the 
most  delicate,  most  precious  thing  in  life; 
then  will  egoism  and  unselfishness  attain 
a  perfect  harmony,  because  the  husband 
and  wife  find  happiness  only  in  assuring 
the  happiness  of  the  other.  That  is  the 
union  which  the  Norwegian  poet  defines 
when  he  calls  true  marriage  "a  yearning 
quest  after  each  other,  an  energetic  culti- 
vation, assertion  of  the  personality,  in 
order  to  be  able  to  give  one's  personality; 
an  ever  increasing  intimacy  of  under- 
standing of  each  other;  a  union  which  the 
whole  course  of  life  will  make  more  pro- 
found." 

So  prepared,  the  absolute  human  ideal 
will  become  perhaps  a  living  reality;  not 
as  an  isolated  man,  not  as  an  isolated 
woman,  but  as  a  man  and  a  woman  who 
shall  give  to  mankind  a  new  religion  — 
that  of  happiness. 

*     *     *     * 

Many  indeed  still  doubt  that  marriage 


28 


can  become  this  highest  form  of  existence 
in  life,  in  which  the  surrender  of  the  ego 
and  the  self-seeking  of  the  ego  reach  a  per- 
fect harmony.  It  is  asserted  that  this  ideal 
condition  can  be  attained  perhaps  by 
exceptional  people,  but  never  by  ordinary 
people,  and  that  the  morality  of  the  latter 
can  be  kept  sound  only  by  legal  and  social 
restraint. 

My  belief,  however,  is  that,  just  as  the 
Children  of  Israel  followed  the  pillar  of 
fire,  so  ordinary  men  follow  at  a  distance 
exceptional  men,  and  in  this  way  mankind 
as  a  whole  advances.  Ordinary  men  are 
just  now  determined  upon  certain  concep- 
tions which  at  the  end  of  the  previous  cen- 
tury were  not  conclusive  even  for  excep- 
tional people.  The  marriage  of  reason, 
for  example,  is  already  considered  ignoble 
by  many.  The  authority  of  the  parents 
is  very  seldom  in  evidence  either  to  coerce 
the  children  into  a  marriage  without  love 
or  to  restrain  them  from  it.  Even  the 
superficial  erotic  emotion  of  our  day  is 
serious  in  comparison  with  the  shallow 
and  frivolous  or  vulgar  and  cruel  gallantry 

29 


of  the  eighteenth  century.  In  the  geolog- 
ical deposits  of  legislation  and  still  more 
in  those  of  literature  we  can  study  these 
risings  of  the  levels  of  the  erotic  senti- 
ments. So  we  are  thereby  convinced  that 
the  demands  and  conflicts  of  the  excep- 
tional men  become  gradually  those  of  the 
ordinary  men  also,  even  though  the  ordi- 
nary men  are  always  some  generations 
behind  the  men  who  are  stirred  by  new 
emotions,  new  conflicts,  when  the  many 
have  reached  the  problems  which  some 
decades  before  occupied  only  the  few. 

Certainly  it  may,  under  present  imper- 
fect conditions,  often  be  a  duty  not  to 
destroy  the  outward  form  of  marriage  for 
the  sake  of  the  children.  But  by  no  means 
can  this  duty  be  preached  as  universally 
binding.  Only  the  individual  himself  can 
in  each  separate  case  determine  the  disso- 
lution best,  both  for  the  children  and  for 
the  married  couple  themselves,  of  a  mar- 
riage which  has  fallen  asunder  within. 
When  we  consider  the  development  in  its 
entirety,  the  sooner  people  cease  to  sanc- 
tion the  present  marriage  the  more  fortu- 

30 


nate  it  will  be;  for  the  sooner  will  the 
transformation  be  forced  upon  us  by 
which  marriage  will  maintain  its  perma- 
nence only  from  within.  Only  then  will 
man  be  wholly  able  to  have  the  experi- 
ences and  to  find  the  new,  delicate  means 
by  which  fidelity  can  be  strengthened  and 
happiness  assured.  But  man  will  not  seek 
this  expedient  so  long  as  he  can  rely  upon 
the  power  of  legal  right  and  social  opinion 
to  hold  together  that  which  love  does  not 
unify. 

The  ever  increasing  individualization  of 
love  indicates  that  mono-marriage  will 
doubtless  remain  the  form  of  erotic  union 
between  man  and  woman.  But  this  rule 
will  have,  in  the  future,  as  in  the  past, 
many  exceptions,  since  the  feelings  can 
change.  The  conflicts  which  will  thus 
arise  will  bring  suffering  as  a  consequence, 
but  not  the  bitterness  nor  the  contention 
which  the  property  sense  in  marriage  now 
so  often  occasions.  The  deep  conscious- 
ness that  love  belongs  not  to  the  sphere  of 
duty  but  only  to  that  of  freedom  will  cause 
the  one  who  has  lost  the  love  of  the  other 


31 


to  feel  the  same  resignation  before  the 
inevitable,  as  if  he  were  separated  from 
the  other  by  death. 

And  in  cases  where  the  individual  is  not 
capable  of  this  resignation,  then  the  law  as 
well  as  custom  shall  make  it  impossible 
for  the  one  to  hold  back  the  other  against 
his  will.  Each  of  the  twain  shall  be  mas- 
ter of  his  own  person  and  of  his  property, 
of  his  work  and  of  his  mode  of  life;  the 
union  shall  in  each  especial  case  be 
arranged  by  the  agreement  of  the  individ- 
uals, and  the  law  shall  decide  only  the 
rights  and  duties  of  the  husband  and  wife 
in  regard  to  the  children. 

When  in  this  way  it  shall  come  to  pass 
that  neither  the  husband  nor  wife  shall 
have  in  outward  sense,  in  external  things, 
anything  to  gain  or  to  lose  by  the  consum- 
mation or  dissolution  of  marriage,  then 
only  the  erotic  problem  appears  in  all  its 
seriousness. 

Many  mistakes,  many  caricatures,  many 
tragic  failures  will  naturally  be  the  result 
of  freedom.  Great  waves  have  great 
combers.     A  new  principle  cannot  be  put 

32' 


into  effect  without  bringing  with  it  new 
mistakes.  But  we  may,  however,  be  con- 
vinced that  the  laws  of  Hfe  —  to  which 
belongs  the  law  that  suffering  follows  the 
misuse  of  freedom  —  will  finally  be  able 
to  bring  everything  within  its  right  limits. 
Nothing  indeed  has  occasioned  more  suf- 
fering as  an  indirect  consequence  than 
Christianity,  and  although  Jesus  knew 
that,  yet  he  did  not  hesitate  to  give  to 
mankind  this  new  creative  force  which 
destroyed  in  order  to  create.  But  it  is 
above  all  His  ideality  which  His  present 
followers  lack,  the  great  ideality  which 
dares  to  believe  in  the  might  of  the  spirit 
rather  than  that  of  the  form. 

It  is,  therefore,  quite  natural  that  these 
Christians,  the  upholders  of  society, 
oppose  the  new  ideal  of  morality  with  vain 
apprehensions.  They  believe  that  a 
woman  whose  conscious  aim  is  "Self- 
assertion  in  self-surrender"  will  forfeit  the 
immediate,  fresh  originality  in  this  sur- 
render. They  believe  marriage  must  be 
destroyed  when  the  support  of  its  devel- 
opment is  no  longer  bond  and  injunction, 

33 


but  is  its  own  vital  force.  They  believe 
morality  v^ill  lose  in  the  struggle  if  youth 
learns  to  consider  the  love  between  man 
and  woman  as  the  central  condition  of 
life.  These,  and  a  hundred  similar  appre- 
hensions have  all  one  and  the  same  source. 

This  source  is  the  Christian  conception 
of  life  which  has  displaced  the  great, 
sound,  strong  conviction  of  antiquity  of 
the  holiness  of  nature.  Mary  was  the 
"Virgin  Mother;"  Jesus,  celibate.  Paul 
regarded  marriage  as  the  lesser  of  two 
evils.  Thus  man  first  learned  to  regard 
the  unmarried  state  as  the  higher  and  the 
married  as  the  lower  state.  The  result  of 
the  Christian  conception  of  life  then  was 
that  the  sex  relation  was  regarded  in  and 
for  itself  as  unholy,  human  nature  in  and 
for  itself  as  base  and  the  earthly  demand 
for  happiness  as  the  greatest  egotism. 

Therefore  the  Christian  conception  of 
life  is  now,  since  it  has  accomplished  its 
great  task  of  culture,  the  development  of 
altruism  —  an  obstacle  to  the  unified  con- 
ception out  of  which  the  happiness  of  man- 
kind will  finally  develop. 

34 


No  one  who  thinks  or  feels  deeply 
dreams  that  this  happiness  can  be  easily 
achieved.  The  consistent  belief  of  monism 
in  human  nature  can  only  gradually 
leaven  life.  And  until  then  suffering  will 
be  for  the  majority  the  first  result  of  free- 
dom. Even  for  the  few,  to  whom  the  rela- 
tionships have  already  given  happiness, 
must  this  be  incomplete  in  the  measure  in 
which  they  feel  sympathy  with  all  the  suf- 
fering about  them.  But  above  all  is  hap- 
piness rare  because  the  genius  for  happi- 
ness is  still  so  rare,  is  indeed  on  the  whole 
the  rarest  genius.  To  possess  it  means  to 
approach  life  with  the  humiHty  of  a  beg- 
gar, but  to  treat  it  with  the  proud  gener- 
osity of  a  prince;  to  bring  to  its  totality 
the  deep  understanding  of  a  great  poet 
and  to  each  of  its  moments  the  abandon- 
ment and  ingenuousness  of  a  child;  it 
means  to  be  able  to  enjoy  wholly  each 
present,  immediate,  joy  and  yet  to  be  able 
to  give  up  the  incidental  joy  for  the  endur- 
ing one. 

Happiness  lies  so  far  from  man ;  but  he 
must  begin  by  daring  to  will  it.    It  is  this 

35 


courage  which  Christianity  broke  down 
when  it  directed  the  soul  from  the  earth  to 
eternity  and  gave  to  renunciation  the 
highest  place  among  ethical  values. 
Through  the  Revaluation  of  all  Values, 
which  is  now  going  on,  happiness  will 
receive  this  place. 

He  who  contends  for  the  deepest  of  all 
ideas,  Spinosa's  idea,  that  "J^^Y  is  perfec- 
tion," contends  with  certainty  of  victory, 
however  solitary  he  may  stand,  however 
much  of  his  heart's  blood  may  be  shed  in 
the  strife. 

We  live  still  in  our  inmost  soul  only 
by  that  for  which  we  die.  And  all  for 
which  we  have  died  will  live  when  the  time 
shall  come  in  which  all  we  ourselves  have 
suffered  signifies  nothing  for  us,  yet  that 
for  which  we  have  suffered  signifies  every- 
thing for  others. 


36 


THE  WOMAN  OF  THE  FUTURE 


THE  WOMAN  OF  THE  FUTURE 


THERE  are  phrases  which 
charm  like  a  song,  and  one  of 
these  phrases  is:  "The  Woman 
of  the  Future." 
This  sings  for  me  in  the 
verse  of  a  poet  and  a  seer,  whose  name 
now  shines  with  the  radiance  of  the  morn- 
ing star,  although  during  his  lifetime  it 
was  sullied  with  defamation  as  that  of  an 
atheist  and  destroyer  of  society  —  because 
the  luminous  path  of  his  thoughts  appeared 
to  the  prejudices  of  his  contemporaries  as 
a  blinding  flash  of  lightning.  His  poet's 
vision  revealed  to  him  a  new  time  in  which 
women  would  be 

"...     frank,  beautiful  and  kind 
As  the  free  heaven,  which  rains  fresh  light 

and  dew 
On  the  wide  earth 


39 


From  custom's  evil  taint  exempt  and  pure; 
Speaking  the  wisdom  once  they  could  not 

think, 
Looking  emotions  once  they  feared  to  feel, 
And  changed  to  all  which  once  they  dared 

not  be 
Yet  being  now,  made  earth  like  heaven." 
This  beautiful  profile  of  the  woman  of 
the  future,  which  Shelley  has  traced,  floats 
before  me  when  I  attempt  here  to  draw 
her  portrait  in  more  precise  outlines. 

5ii        *        *        ^ 

The  storm  and  stress  period  of  woman 
and  the  new  social  and  psychological  for- 
mations thereby  entailed  must,  indeed, 
extend  far  into  the  twentieth  century. 
This  period  of  conflict  will  cease  only 
when  woman  within  and  out  of  marriage 
shall  have  received  legal  equality  with 
man.  It  will  cease  when  such  a  transfor- 
mation of  society  shall  have  come  to  pass 
that  the  present  rivalry  between  the  sexes 
shall  be  ended  in  a  manner  advantageous 
to  both  and  when  finally  the  work  of  earn- 
ing a  livelihood  as  well  as  care  of  the 
household  shall  have  received  such  form 

40 


that  it  will  weigh  less  heavily  than  now 
upon  the  woman. 

Toward  the  end  of  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury only  could  the  type  of  the  nineteenth 
century  woman  have  reached  its  culmina- 
tion and  a  new  type  of  woman  begin  to 
appear. 

My  ideal  picture  of  the  woman  of  the 
future,  and  when  one  paints  an  ideal  one 
does  not  need  to  limit  one's  imagination,  is 
that  she  will  be  a  being  of  profound  con- 
trasts which  have  attained  harmony.  She 
will  appear  as  a  great  multiplicity  and  a 
complete  unity;  a  rich  plenitude  and  a  per- 
fect simplicity;  a  thoroughly  educated 
creature  of  culture  and  an  original  sponta- 
neous nature;  a  strongly  marked  human 
individuality  and  a  complete  manifesta- 
tion of  most  profound  womanliness,  j  This 
woman  will  understand  the  spirit  of  a 
scientific  work,  of  an  exact  search  after 
truth,  of  free,  independent  thought,  of 
artistic  creation.  She  will  comprehend 
the  necessity  of  the  laws  of  nature  and  of 
the  progress  of  evolution ;  she  will  possess 
the  feeling  of  solidarity  and  regard  for  the 

41 


interests    of    society.     Because   she   will 
know  more  and  think  more  clearly  than 
the  woman  of  the  present,  she  will  be  more 
just;  because  she  will  be  stronger,  she  will 
be  better;  because  she  will  be  wiser,  she 
will  be  also  more  gentle.     She  will  be  able 
to  see  things  in  the  ensemble  and  in  their 
connection  with  each  other;  she  will  lose 
thereby  certain  prejudices  which  are  still 
called    virtues.       Nevertheless    she    will 
remain  the  one  who  forms  customs.     But 
she  will  not  seek  her  support  in  social  con- 
vention ;  she  will  find  it  in  the  laws  of  her 
own  being.     She  will  have  the  courage  to 
think  her  own  thoughts  and  to  investigate 
the  new  thoughts  of  her  time.     She  will 
dare  to  experience  and  to  ackowledge  feel- 
ings which    she    now  suppresses  or  con- 
ceals.    Her  full  liberty  of  action  and  the 
complete  development  of  her  personality 
will  render    possible    intrepid    efforts  for 
life,  an  energetic  striving  after  an  exist- 
ence which  shall  conform  to  her  own  ego. 
And  such  an  existence  she  will  be  able  also 
to  find  with  surer  instinct  than  now.     She 
will  understand  how  to  work  with  more 


42 


intensity,  to  rest  with  more  intensity  and 
with  more  intensity  to  dehght  in  all  imme- 
diate, simple  sources  of  joy  than  the 
woman  of  the  present  is  able  to  do.  Thus 
in  the  new  woman  the  feeling  of  life  will 
be  enhanced,  her  experience  will  be  more 
profound;  her  soul  life,  her  demands  for 
beauty,  her  senses  will  be  more  developed 
and  refined.  She  will  be  more  sensitive, 
more  delicately  vibratory;  she  will  there- 
fore be  able  to  be  more  profoundly  happy 
and  also  to  suffer  more  keenly  than  the 
woman  of  our  time. 

Thus  the  woman  of  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury will  give  new  value  to  the  life  of 
society  and  to  art,  to  science  and  to  litera- 
ture. But  her  greatest  cultural  signifi- 
cance remains,  however,  by  means  of  the 
enigmatic,  the  instinctive,  the  intuitive 
and  the  impulsive  in  her  own  being  to  pro- 
tect mankind  from  the  dangers  of  exces- 
sive culture.  In  face  of  knowledge  she  will 
maintain  the  rights  of  the  unknowable ;  in 
face  of  logic,  feeling;  in  face  of  reality, 
possibilities;  and  in  face  of  analysis,  intui- 
tion.    Woman  will  above  all  further  the 


43 


growth  of  the  soul,  man  that  of  the  intelli- 
gence ;  she  will  extend  the  sphere  of  intui- 
tion, he  that  of  reason;  she  will  realize 
tenderness,  he  justice;  she  will  triumph  by 
audacity,  he  by  courage. 

The  woman  of  the  future  will  not  only 
have  learned  much,  she  will  also  have  for- 
gotten much  —  especially  the  feminine  as 
well  as  anti-feminine  follies  of  the  present 
time. 

With  her  whole  being  she  will  desire  the 
happiness  of  love.  She  will  be  chaste,  not 
because  she  is  cold,  but  because  she  is  pas- 
sionate. She  will  be  reserved,  not  because 
she  is  bloodless  but  because  she  is  full 
blooded.  She  will  be  soulful  and  therefore 
she  will  be  sensuous;  she  will  be  proud  and 
therefore  she  will  be  true.  She  will  demand 
a  great  love,  because  she  herself  can  give 
a  still  greater.  The  erotic  problem,  because 
of  her  refined  idealism,  will  be  extremely 
complicated  and  often  almost  insoluble. 
Therefore  the  happiness  which  she  will 
give  and  experience  will  be  richer,  more 
profound  and  enduring  than  anything 
which  up   to  the  present   time  has  been 


called  happiness.  Many  traits  which 
belong  to  the  wife  and  mother  of  today- 
will  probably  be  lacking  in  the  woman  of 
the  future.  She  will  remain  always  the 
beloved,  the  sweetheart,  and  only  so  will 
she  become  a  mother.  She  will  devote 
her  finest  and  strongest  forces  to  the  diffi- 
cult and  beautiful  art  of  being  at  the  same 
time  the  beloved  and  the  mother;  her 
religious  cult  will  be  to  create  the  supreme 
happiness  of  life.  Because  she  will  know 
and  value  the  psychical  and  physical  con- 
ditions of  health  and  beauty  she  will 
choose  the  father  of  her  children  with 
clearer  vision  and  deeper  feeling  of  respon- 
sibility than  at  present;  she  will  bear  and 
rear  sound  and  beautiful  beings  and  she 
herself  will  possess  greater  attraction  and 
longer  youth  than  the  woman  of  the  pres- 
ent. She  will  charm  all  her  life,  because  she 
will  always  beautify  existence.  But  she 
will  please  only  because,  at  every  age,  she 
will  be  wholly  herself;  and  her  imperish- 
able youth,  her  most  perfect  beauty,  she 
will  reveal  solely  to  him  whom  she  loves. 
She  will  know  that  the  charm  of  the  soul 

45 


is  the  most  profound;  and  out  of  the  pleni- 
tude of  her  being  she  will  create  the  eter- 
nal renewal  of  this  charm,  always  unex- 
pected and  in  infinitely  nuanced  expres- 
sions of  her  personal  grace.  By  her  mere 
presence  she  will  remove  the  constraint 
of  form  and  custom  and  will  create  vary- 
ing expressions,  elevated  by  her  own 
nobility,  for  the  family  life,  the  public  life 
and  for  society.  She  will  probably  speak 
less  than  the  woman  of  the  present  time, 
but  her  silence  and  her  smile  will  be  more 
eloquent.  She  will  give  herself  always 
directly  and  always  with  moderation,  dif- 
ferent and  always  constant,  spontaneous 
and  always  exquisite.  Her  being  will  pour 
forth,  brimming  free  and  fresh,  like  the 
surge  of  the  mountain  torrent,  but  like 
this,  dominated  by  a  certain  inner  rhythm. 
However  far  she  allows  herself  to  go  —  in 
ecstasy  of  joy,  in  passion  of  tenderness,  in 
delirium  of  happiness  or  in  the  frenzy  of 
grief  —  yet  she  will  never  lose  herself. 
She  will  be  a  multiplicity  of  women  and 
yet  always  one,  whether  she  plays  and 
smiles  or  suffers  and  smiles;  whether  she 
beams  with  health  or  bleeds  with  mortal 


46 


wounds ;  whether  she  be  imbued  with  and 
radiate  repose  or  nervous  intensity,  joy  or 
tears,  sun  or  night,  coolness  or  ardor. 

The  woman  of  the  future  exists  already 
in  man's  dreams  of  women,  and  woman 
fashions  herself  according  to  the  dreams 
of  man.  The  modern  man's  ideal  of 
woman  is  not  the  masculine  woman,  but 
the  revelation  of  the  "eternal  feminine" 
developed  in  all  directions.  This  new  type 
of  woman  has  already  gleamed  forth  here 
and  there,  not  only  in  our  time  but  in  cen- 
turies passed.  In  the  Middle  Ages  she 
wrote  the  letters  of  Heloise ;  in  the  Renais- 
sance, Leonardo  painted  her  as  Mona 
Lisa;  and  in  the  eighteenth  century  she 
held  the  salon  of  Mile.  Lespinasse.  In  our 
century  she  wrote  the  love  sonnets  of 
Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning;  she  appeared 
upon  the  stage  as  Eleonora  Duse  —  and 
as  in  a  precious  stone  her  being  is  crystal- 
lized by  the  poet's  words  with  which 
Rahel's  personality  was  epitomized:  "calm 
yet  emotionally  vivid.* 

♦Footnote  from  French  translation: — The  reference 
here  is  to  Rahel  de  Varnhagen.  The  citation  is  taken 
from  the  "Hyperion"  of  Holderlin,  a  German  poet  of 
whom  mention  is  made  apropos  of  Nietzsche,  upon 
whom  he  had  great  influence. 

47 


THE  CONVENTIONAL  WOMAN 


THE  CONVENTIONAL  WOMAN 


CONVENTIONALITY  is  the 
tacit  agreement  to  set  ap- 
pearance before  reality,  form 
before  content,  subordina- 
tion before  principal.  Its 
field  in  certain  measure  is  'Vogue"  chang- 
ing according  to  the  idea  of  beauty  of  each 
new  season.  In  deeper  sense,  however,  a 
part  of  the  sphere  of  conventionality  coin- 
cides always  with  that  of  law  and  custom, 
and  with  the  conception  of  the  amount  of 
self-control  and  self-sacrifice  which  every 
individual  must  impose  upon  himself  for 
the  common  life  with  others.  The  further 
the  evolution  of  humanity  advances,  the 
fewer  are  the  fields  to  which  the  power  of 
society  over  the  thought,  belief,  mode  of 
life  and  manner  of  work  of  the  individual 
is  restricted.     More  and  more  prevalent 

51 


becomes  the  conviction  that  all  those 
forms  of  expression  of  the  individual 
w^hich  do  not  interfere  with  the  rights  of 
others  must  be  free.  A  great  part  of  the 
w^ork  of  culture  of  each  new  generation 
has  consisted  and  still  consists  in  clear- 
ing away  great  masses  of  conceptions  of 
right  dried  up  into  conventionalism,  dead 
rubbish  which  prevents  the  new  germs 
from  sprouting.  In  every  period  strong 
voices  are  heard  which  desire  freedom 
from  the  prevailing  customs,  and  right 
of  choice  for  the  individual  conscience 
and  temperament.  In  this  ever-continuous 
struggle  it  is  important  to  distinguish 
what  are  really  still  living  conceptions  of 
right  from  factitious  conceptions,  which 
form  only  a  conventional  obstacle  to  a 
more  beautiful  freedom,  a  deeper  truth,  a 
greater  originality,  a  richer  life  content. 
Yet  it  is  not  only  old  conventionalism 
which  needs  to  be  rooted  out.  In  every 
faction,  in  every  social  circle  are  soon 
formed  lifeless  collections  of  prejudices, 
paltry  motives,  dependent  customs.  It  is 
always  the  women  among  whom  conven- 

52 


tionalism  reaches  its  acme.  For  conserva- 
tism, that  deep  significant  instinct  of 
woman,  becomes  also  often  a  prop  of  con- 
ventionaHty.  Women  are  as  yet  seldom 
sufficiently  developed  personally  to  dis- 
tinguish, in  that  which  they  wish  to  cher- 
ish, the  appearance  from  the  reahty,  the 
form  from  the  content;  or  if  they  do  dis- 
tinguish, they  have  as  yet  rarely  the  cour- 
age to  choose  the  content  and  reality  if 
the  majority  have  declared  for  form  and 
appearance! 

In  the  literature  of  the  last  ten  years  and 
in  part  also  among  women  there  prevails, 
however,  a  strong  opposition  to  conven- 
tionality. This  opposition  has  been  di- 
rected especially  against  the  archaic  ideal 
of  woman,  according  to  which  renuncia- 
tion is  still  considered  the  highest  attri- 
bute of  woman ;  and  against  the  antiquated 
conception  of  morality  which  regarded 
love  without  marriage  as  immoral,  but  any 
marriage,  even  without  love,  as  moral. 

The  women  who  adopted  the  new  ideal 
—  which  a  Norwegian  poet  strikingly  de- 
fined as  "Self-assertion  in  self-surrender." 

53 


"Affirmation  of  self  in  giving  of  self" — 
encounter  now  on  the  part  of  the  modern 
woman's-rights  advocates  the  same  kind 
of  conventional  objection  as  in  the  fifties 
and  sixties  v^as  directed  against  the  then 
new  ideal  of  the  earlier  woman  movement. 
The  older  emancipation  movement  ad- 
vanced along  the  first  line  in  the  effort  to 
establish  the  right  of  woman  as  a  human 
being;  that  is,  to  give  to  woman  the  same 
rights  as  to  man.  The  present  movement 
purposes  to  assert  the  right  of  woman  as 
an  individuality;  the  absolute  right  to  be- 
lieve, to  feel,  to  think  and  to  act  in  her  own 
way,  if  it  does  not  interfere  with  the  rights 
of  others.  Since  the  first  end  was  a  gen- 
eral one,  the  movement  could  in  great 
part  be  made  effective  by  collective  work 
in  attaining  that  end;  the  exposition  of 
the  independence  of  the  individuality  of 
woman,  on  the  contrary,  must  be  the  per- 
sonal concern  of  each  single  individual. 
This  those  women  do  not  understand  who 
still  are  working  ever  for  the  first  end  — 
the  rights  of  woman  as  a  human  being. 
They  do  not  understand  that  every  woman 

54 


must  receive,  not  merely  her  universal 
rights,  as  a  member  of  the  body  politic, 
but  also  her  entire  individual  rights  as  the 
possessor  of  a  definite  personality.  The 
right  to  establish  an  ego  independent  of, 
and  perhaps  entirely  at  variance  with,  the- 
ories and  ideals  is  at  heart  the  point  of 
struggle  between  the  one  or  the  other  indi- 
vidual woman  and  the  women  representa- 
tives of  the  earlier  era  of  the  woman  ques- 
tion. 

The  discovery  that  each  personality  is 
a  new  world  —  which  in  Shakespeare 
found  its  Columbus,  a  Columbus  after 
whom  new  mariners  immediately  under- 
took new  conquests  —  this  discovery  of 
literature  has  as  yet  only  partially  pene- 
trated the  universal  consciousness,  as  a 
truth  of  experience.  But  the  fact  that  it 
has  made  a  beginning,  that  the  conven- 
tional, inflexible  conception  of  the  nature 
of  man  and  of  the  problems  resulting 
therefrom  is  giving  place  to  a  relative  and 
individual  conception  —  this  is  above  all 
to  be  ascribed  to  the  thinkers  and  poets, 
in  whom  the  conventional  has  its  deadliest 


55 


foe;  the  recreative  poets  whose  character- 
istic is  deep  appreciation  of  all  primal 
forces  of  existence,  of  all  essential  ele- 
ments of  life.  For  although  convention- 
alism in  the  form  of  the  echo  springs  up 
also  around  genius,  yet  the  creative  genius 
itself  is  always  a  protest  against  conven- 
tionality in  which  any  selfjustified  life  or 
art  —  conception  has  perished. 

The  poet  who  here  in  the  North  shat- 
tered with  a  blow  the  archaic  conventional 
ideal  of  woman  who  sacrificed  herself  in 
all  circumstances,  was  Ibsen  when  he  sent 
Nora  out  away  from  her  husband  and 
children  in  order  to  fulfill  the  duties 
toward  herself;  when  by  means  of 
**Ghosts"  he  etched  into  the  moral  con- 
sciousness the  idea  that  a  woman's  fidelity 
to  her  own  personality  is  more  significant 
for  the  welfare  of  others  as  well  as  of  her- 
self than  her  fidelity  to  conventional  con- 
ceptions of  morality. 

And  Ibsen  has  always  been  the  annun- 
ciator of  the  freedom  under  one's  own  re- 
sponsibility which  is  the  key  to  individu- 
alism.    Long  has  man  listened,  only  in 

56 


part  has  he  understood.  And  no  con- 
sciousness is  in  this  respect  more  hermet- 
ically sealed  than  that  of  certain  woman's 
rights  advocates!  That  all  women  should 
have  the  same  rights  as  men,  this  is  all 
that  they  mean  in  their  talk  about  the  free- 
ing of  the  woman's  personality.  They 
forget  that  the  right  to  be  what  she  wishes 
entails  often  for  the  woman,  as  for  the 
man,  the  obligation  to  suppress  that  which 
she  really  is  by  nature  and  feeling.  They 
forget  that  the  personality  has  deeper 
claims  than  the  right  to  work.  They  over- 
look the  infinite  variety  of  shades  of  feel- 
ing, thought  and  character  which  caused 
the  demand  of  solidarity  in  opinions  and 
actions,  among  the  women  active  in  the 
woman  question,  to  degenerate  into  sup- 
pression of  woman's  individuality.  Cer- 
tainly it  is  true  that  united  action  is  still 
necessary  in  order  that  woman  may  ob- 
tain the  rights  which  she  still  lacks.  But 
all  compulsory  mobilized  action  is  here 
more  dangerous  than  elsewhere ;  because 
for  the  advance  of  the  woman  question  in 
the  deepest  sense  it  is  essential  precisely 

57 


that  the  different  feminine  individuaUties 
show  their  useful  faculties  as  freely  as 
possible  in  the  different  fields  of  activity. 

The  conventionality  which  is  a  menace 
in  the  woman  question  betrays  itself,  not 
only  in  exaggerated  demands  for  solidar- 
ity, but  also  in  the  mode  of  treating  the 
objections  of  the  opposition.  It  reveals 
itself  in  the  lack  of  comprehension  of  the 
fact  that  the  woman  question,  particularly 
in  what  concerns  the  labor  field,  now  inter- 
sects on  all  sides  the  path  of  the  social 
question.  It  especially  evinces  itself  in  the 
inability  to  understand  how  the  woman 
question,  as  it  advances  in  its  evolution, 
becomes  more  complex,  and  how  thereby, 
ever  greater  difficulties  arise  in  taking  an 
absolute  position  in  the  questions  con- 
nected with  it. 

It  is  necessary  that  woman's  opportu- 
nities for  culture  be  multiplied.  But  do 
all  these  measures  of  culture  develop  also 
the  personality?  Have  we  not  met  the 
finest,  most  original,  most  charming 
natures  among  unlettered  dames  of  sev- 
enty and   eighty  years,   or  among   such 

58 


I 

women  as  never  had  a  systematic  educa- 
tion? It  is  right  that  the  wages  of  women 
should  be  increased;  but  will  the  labor 
value  of  women  increase  in  proportion? 
Can  we  even  desire  that  the  majority  of 
these  women  bent  over  their  desks  shall 
devote  a  live  interest  to  their  work,  when 
their  sole  essential  being  would  first  find 
expression  only  when  bent  over  a  cradle? 
It  is  well  also  for  girls  of  wealth  to  wish 
to  have  a  vocation.  But  is  it  also  good  if 
they,  because  they  can  be  satisfied  with  a 
smaller  wage,  take  away  the  work  from 
poor  girls  and  men,  often  more  compe- 
tent, who  have  to  live  entirely  by  the 
fruits  of  their  work,  and  must  therefore 
demand  larger  wages? 

So  long  as  these  and  many  other  ques- 
tions remain  unanswered,  there  is  today 
quite  as  much  that  is  conventional  in  re- 
joicing unreservedly  over  the  many  girls 
who  become  students  or  leave  the  home, 
where  they  are  very  much  needed,  for  out- 
side work,  as  there  was  in  our  grandmoth- 
er's time  in  wishing  to  limit  the  province 
of  woman  to  the  kitchen,  the  nursery  and 
the  drawing  room. 

59 


It  is  not  yet  known  whether  woman, 
through  the  competition  for  bread,  will 
develop  physiologically  and  psychologic- 
ally to  greater  health  and  harmony. 
Woman  is  a  new  subject  for  research,  and 
only  centuries  of  full  freedom  in  choice 
of  labor  and  in  personal  development  can 
furnish  material  for  well  grounded  con- 
clusions. Many  signs,  however,  point  to 
this:  —  that  an  ineffaceable,  deep-rooted 
psychological  difference  due  to  physical 
peculiarities  will  always  exist  between 
man  and  woman,  which  probably  will  al- 
ways keep  her  by  preference  active  in  the 
sphere  of  the  family,  while  he  probably 
will  remain  active  in  other  spheres  of  cul- 
ture. But  with  a  perfect  equality  with 
man  and  a  full  personal  development, 
woman  can  have  a  significance  for  culture 
in  its  entirety  and  for  the  direction  of  soci- 
ety which  we  can  still  scarcely  divine. 

The  conventional  points  of  view,  just 
mentioned  in  considering  the  woman 
question,  retard  the  development  of 
woman's  individuality  above  all  because 
they  overlook  the  diversity  of  nature  and 

60 


the  complexity  of  the  problem.  The  con- 
ventional conception  of  self-renunciation 
as  the  highest  expression  of  womanhood 
is  still  continually  the  greatest  obstacle  to 
the  achievement  of  woman's  personality. 
To  be  able  to  perish  for  a  loved  being  with 
joy  is  one  of  the  beautiful  inalienable  privi- 
liges  of  woman  nature.  But  by  consider- 
ing this  under  all  circumstances  as  ideal, 
woman  has  thus  retarded  not  only  her 
own  development  but  also  that  of  man. 
If  we  compare  marriages  of  older  genera- 
tions with  those  of  the  younger,  the  men 
of  the  latter  show  great  advance  in  regard 
to  considerate  tenderness  and  sympathetic 
understanding  toward  their  wives  — 
wives  who  have  on  the  other  hand  a  per- 
sonal life  more  complete  and  with  other 
demands  than  formerly.  Both  have  thus 
gained  since  women  have  begun  to  prac- 
tice the  self-renunciation  of  self-assertion ! 
Because  for  every  self-sacrificing  woman 
nature  it  is  infinitely  harder  to  take  her 
due  than  to  sacrifice  it. 

*         *         *         * 

Conventional     womanhood     will     ever 

61 


have  its  strongest  support  in  education. 
The  individuahty  of  a  child  is  seldom 
repressed  in  the  inconsiderate  and  brutal 
manner  of  former  times.  But  by  attrition 
it  is  effaced.  In  the  olden  times  the  chil- 
dren enjoyed  a  certain  freedom  in  the 
nursery  where  the  expression  of  life,  mani- 
festation of  joy,  pleasure  and  displeasure, 
sympathy  and  antipathy  of  the  growing 
personality  was  not  continually  moder- 
ated. Now  the  children  are  continually 
with  the  parents  and  these  accustom  them 
to  a  certain  exacting  restraint.  The  chil- 
dren wish  to  be  entertained;  they  cannot 
play  of  their  own  initiative,  for  they  lose 
the  desire  that  originates  in  the  freedom 
of  the  creative  phantasy.  Neither  chil- 
dren nor  parents  possess  themselves  in 
peace.  In  the  continual  association  the 
children  are  worn  out  by  commands  so 
varied  and  numerous  that  obedience  can- 
not be  maintained.  They  do  not,  there- 
fore, learn  the  discipline  necessary  for  the 
development  of  their  personality  —  to 
subordinate  the  unessential  life  express- 
ions to  the  essential  and  to  dominate  even 


62 


over  these  last  —  a  culture  of  the  fallow- 
child  ground  which  must  begin  early  in 
order  to  become  a  second  nature. 

And  this  happens  only  when  the  edu- 
cator knows  clearly  what  he  will  adhere 
to  as  essential  in  the  development  of  the 
child,  and  when  according  to  that  he  es- 
tablishes his  commands  and  prohibitions, 
which  must  be  few  in  number  but  as  im- 
mutable as  the  laws  of  nature,  and  if 
violated  must  bring  upon  the  child,  not 
artificial  punishment,  but  the  inevitable 
results  of  the  act  itself.  So  can  man  by 
fixed  practice  form  the  child  of  nature  into 
a  man  of  culture,  who  out  of  consideration 
for  himself  and  for  others  curbs  his  ten- 
dencies which  are  inimical  to  society, 
without,  however,  suppressing  his  person- 
ality. /  For  outside  the  field  of  immutable 
laws,  children  ought  not  to  be  constrained 
or  coerced  against  their  nature  and  their 
disposition,  against  their  healthy  egoism 
and  against  their  especial  tastes. 

Now  many  mothers  by  their  own  efface- 
ment  of  self  develop  an  unjustified  egoism 
of  the  child,  but  desire  in  other  respects  a 

63 


self-control,  a  circumspection,  a  modera- 
tion and  discretion  such  as  a  whole  life 
has  not  ordinarily  been  able  to  inculcate 
in  the  mother  herself.  Out  of  this  soft 
clay,  which  is  material  for  an  individual- 
ity, parents,  servants  and  teachers  mold  a 
society  being,  sometimes  a  social  being, 
but  never  a  human  being. 

This  modeling  is  called  education.  And 
a  part  of  the  earliest  education  must,  as  I 
have  just  shown,  truly  consist  in  that  of 
molding.  But  after  the  first  years  of  life 
the  aim  of  education  should  be  to  prevent 
all  molding  and  on  the  contrary  to  assure 
the  freedom  or  development  of  the  single 
force  which,  considered  in  the  light  of  the 
whole,  makes  it  significant  for  mankind 
that  new  generations  succeed  those  which 
have  disappeared  —  the  force  of  a  new 
personality. 

Every  child  is  a  new  world,  a  world  into 
which  not  even  the  tenderest  love  can 
wholly  penetrate.  However  openly  the 
clear  eyes  meet  ours,  however  confidingly 
the  soft  hand  is  laid  in  ours,  this  tender 
being  will  perhaps  one  day  deplore  the 

64 


suffering  of  his  childhood,  because  we 
treated  him  according  to  the  assumption 
that  children  are  replicas,  not  originals; 
not  new,  wonderful  personalities.  It  is 
true  the  child  in  certain  measure  is  a  repe- 
tition of  the  child  nature  of  all  times,  but 
at  the  same  time,  and  this  in  a  far  higher 
degree,  an  absolutely  new  synthesis  of 
soul  qualities,  with  new  possibiUties  for 
sorrow  and  joy,  strength  and  weakness. 

This  new  being  will,  upon  his  own  re- 
sponsibility, at  his  own  risk,  live  this  terri- 
fyingly  earnest  life.  What  creative  force, 
new  inceptions,  he  will  be  able  to  bring  to 
it;  what  elasticity  he  will  possess  under 
the  blows  of  destiny,  what  power  to  give 
and  to  receive  happiness  —  all  depends, 
outside  of  nature  itself,  in  essential  degree 
upon  the  educator's  method  of  treating 
this  individual  child  nature. 

Goethe  long  ago  lamented  that  educa- 
tion aspired  to  make  Philistines  out  of 
personalities.  And  this  is  now  much 
worse  since  education  has  become  peda- 
gogical, without  at  the  same  time  becom- 
ing psychological. 

65 


Only  he  who  treats  the  feelings,  will 
and  rights  of  a  child  with  quite  the  same 
consideration  as  those  of  a  grown  person, 
and  who  never  allows  the  personality  of  a 
child  to  feel  other  limitations  than  those 
of  nature  itself,  or  the  consideration,  based 
upon  good  grounds,  for  the  child's  own 
welfare  or  that  of  others  —  only  he  pos- 
sesses the  first  requisite  principle  of  real 
education.  Education  must  assuredly  be 
a  liberating  of  the  personality  from  the 
domination  of  its  own  passions.  But  it 
must  never  strive  to  exterminate  passion 
itself,  which  is  the  innermost  power  of  the 
personality  and  which  cannot  exist  with- 
out the  coexisting  danger  of  a  correspond- 
ing fault.  To  subdue  the  possible  fault  in 
each  spiritual  inclination  by  eliciting 
through  love  the  corresponding  good  in 
the  same  inclination  —  this  alone  is  indi- 
vidual education.  It  is  an  extremely  slow 
education,  in  which  immediate  interfer- 
ence signifies  little,  the  spiritual  atmo- 
sphere of  the  home,  its  mode  of  life  and 
its  ideals  signify  on  the  contrary  almost 
everything.    The  educator  must  above  all 

66 


understand  how  to  wait:  to  reckon  all  ef- 
fects in  the  light  of  the  future,  not  of  the 
present.  \ 

The  educator  believes  often  that  he 
spares  the  child  future  suffering  when  he 
"opposes  his  onesidedness,"  as  it  is  called. 
He  does  not  reflect  that  in  the  effort  to 
force  the  child  in  a  direction  contrary  to 
that  in  which  his  personality  evinces  itself, 
he  merely  succeeds  in  diminishing  his  na- 
ture; yes,  often  merely  in  retaining  the 
weakness  in  the  quality,  not  the  corre- 
sponding strength! 

But  ordinarily  it  is  indeed  no  such  prin- 
ciple, but  only  the  old  thoughtlessly  main- 
tained ideal  of  self-renunciation  which  is 
decisive.  We  repress  the  child's  joy  of 
discovery  and  check  the  spirit  of  enter- 
prise; wound  his  extremely  sensitive  sense 
of  beauty;  exercise  force  over  his  most 
personal  possessions,  his  tokens  of  tend- 
erness; combat  his  aversions  and  quench 
his  enthusiasm.  Amid  such  attacks  upon 
their  individual  being,  their  feelings  and 
their  inclinations  most  children,  but  espe- 
cially girls,  grow  up.     It  is  therefore  not 

67 


surprising  that  when  grown  they  seldom 
look  back  upon  their  childhood  as  a  happy 
time. 

An  intense  feeling  of  life,  a  sense  of 
plenitude,  entirety,  of  the  complete  devel- 
opment of  the  powers  of  the  potentialities 
—  this  constitutes  happiness.  Children 
have  more  possibilities  of  happiness  than 
adults,  for  they  can  experience  this  feeling 
of  joy  of  life  more  undividedly  and  immedi- 
ately. They  should  utilize  these  possibili- 
ties of  happiness  while  the  parents  have 
partial  power  over  their  life.  Soon  enough 
must  they  on  their  own  initiative  attempt, 
accomplish,  bleed;  and  herein  no  one  of 
all  the  influences  of  education  has  even 
approximately  the  significance  of  this: 
that  the  individual  be  not  overtrained, 
that  he  have  still  strength  enough  to  live. 
That  means:  to  suffer  his  own  sorrow,  to 
enjoy  his  own  happiness,  to  perform  his 
own  work,  to  think  his  own  thoughts,  to 
be  able  to  devote  himself  absolutely  and 
entirely  —  the  sole  condition  of  being  able 
to  work,  to  love  and  to  die. 

It  is  a  deep  psychological  truth  that  the 

68 


»> 


kingdom  of  heaven  belongs  to  the  chil- 
dren. For  no  one  attains  the  highest  that 
life  offers  in  any  other  way  than  by  sim- 
plicity, unworldliness  and  the  power  of 
devoting  his  whole  being  without  reserve 
to  his  object.  This  is  the  strength  of  the 
child  nature.  If  a  mother  by  education 
has  preserved  this  holy  strength  and  de- 
veloped it  to  a  conscious  power,  then  she 
has  given  to  mankind  not  only  a  new  being 
but  a  new  personality. 

But  the  education  in  the  family,  just  as 
in  the  school,  is  tending  in  the  opposite 
direction.    The  destruction  of  the  person- 
ality is  therefore  the  great  evil  of  the  time. 
*         *         *         * 

Yet  man  is  fortunately  a  vigorous  or- 
ganism. And  those,  whose  personality 
has  been  bowed  or  repressed  by  education, 
could  raise  themselves  again  and  create 
freedom  for  their  development  if  they 
were  aware  of  the  value  of  this  freedom. 

Few  beings  and  so  likewise  few  women 
can  be  exceptional.  But  if  only  a  few  are 
destined  for  a  great  personality,  yet  never- 
theless most  can,  in  spite  of  the  errors 

69 


of  education,  develop  a  certain  degree  of 
personality,  if  they  are  deeply,  earnestly 
concerned  in  it. 

For  everything  is  interrelated.  No  one 
lives  unpunished  by  a  second  hand.  We 
cannot  advance  intellectually  by  borrow- 
ing, without  becoming  also  morally  less 
scrupulous.  We  are  today  unjust  to  a 
book,  a  picture,  a  drama,  because  we  pro- 
nounce judgment  upon  it  according  to  the 
words  of  others,  or  because  we  do  not  dare 
to  show  the  pleasure  it  gives  us,  in  case 
the  critic  has  not  granted  us  permission  to 
be  pleased,  or  because  we  feign  indigna- 
tion we  do  not  feel,  but  which  others  re- 
quire of  us  in  the  name  of  taste  or  moral- 
ity. Tomorrow,  in  the  same  way,  we  shall 
be  unjust  or  dishonest  to  man,  or  to  our 
own  feeling  —  an  injustice  or  a  dishonesty 
which  can  have  influence  over  the  destiny 
of  a  whole  life. 

The  sum  of  spiritual  riches,  of  spiritual 
utilities,  is  thereby  diminished  if  we  do 
not  cede  to  the  whole  what  is  most  essen- 
tially ours.  That  which  is  really  our  own 
may  be  great  or  small,  rich  or  insignificant 

70 


—  if  we  ourselves  have  felt  or  thought  it, 
it  is  more  significant  to  others  than  that 
w^hich  we  merely  repeat,  even  if  our  au- 
thority be  the  highest.  And  in  those  cases 
where  we  must  rely  upon  authorities,  we 
still  can  put  a  certain  personality  into  our 
choice  and  honesty  in  acknowledging  our 
indebtedness,  by  confessing  that  we  have 
borrowed  our  judgment  we  can  put  hon- 
esty and  originality  into  this  dependence. 
It  is  possible  for  no  one  to  acquire  more 
than  a  limited  amount  of  the  results  of 
culture,  to  form  an  entirely  original  judg- 
ment oftener  than  in  a  few  isolated  cases. 
But  each  one  can  learn  to  understand  that 
it  is  a  mark  of  culture  not  to  pronounce 
judgment  upon  questions  with  which  he 
is  not  conversant.  Good  taste  prescribes 
that  just  as  one  refuses  to  wear  false  jew- 
els if  one  possesses  no  real  ones,  so  one 
should  refrain  from  pronouncing  judg- 
ment upon  persons  or  questions  upon 
which  one  has  not  formed  an  opinion 
through  one's  own  impressions.  When 
this  honesty  begins  to  be  considered  a 
mark  of  spiritual  refinement,  then  will  the 

71 


culture  of  woman  have  made  quite  as 
great  advance  as  when  she  learned  to  read. 
For  next  to  the  power  to  form  decisions 
for  one's  self  stands  in  culture  value  the 
ability  to  understand  what  opinions  one 
does  not  possess  and  the  courage  to  rec- 
ognize one's  delicacy. 

Courage  and  truth  —  that  is  what 
women  lack  above  all.  And  these  are  the 
qualities  which  they  must  cultivate  if  the 
feminine  personality  is  to  grow.  This 
does  not  result  because  women  devote 
themselves  to  study,  be  it  ever  so  thor- 
ough, or  to  social  tasks,  be  they  ever  so 
responsible.  Both  further  the  develop- 
ment of  woman's  personality  in  the  meas- 
ure only  in  which  her  own  investigations, 
her  own  choice,  make  her  means  of  culture 
and  her  work  an  organic  part  of  herself. 
To  develop  woman's  personality  from 
within  —  that  is  the  great  woman  ques- 
tion. To  free  woman  from  conventional- 
ity —  that  is  the  great  aim  of  the  emanci- 
pation of  woman. 

Such  a  conception  of  the  woman  ques- 
tion is  for  me  the  ideal  conception  of  this 

72 


present  great  movement.  And  ideality 
does  not  mean  to  adopt  as  the  conception 
of  life  that  which  the  majority  considers 
ideal.  Ideality  means  to  live  for  the  ideal, 
which  has  inflamed  our  consciousness  and 
not  to  violate  this  consciousness  by  adapt- 
ing it  to  such  ideals  as  we  feel  with  our 
whole  soul  are  lower. 

If  it  is  true  that  "the  lack  of  genius  is 
the  lack  of  courage,"  so  then  is  it  still  more 
true  in  regard  to  the  lack  of  personality. 
Here  lies  one  of  the  reasons  why  individu- 
ality is  less  often  found  among  women 
than  among  men.  A  man  is  more  fully  in- 
flamed with  his  idea,  the  object  of  his 
work;  he  is  more  intense  in  that  which  he 
knows  and  which  he  wills.  He  becomes 
thus  often  —  just  as  the  child  —  more  one- 
sided, almost  always  more  egoistic,  but 
much  more  absolute  than  a  woman  in  like 
position.  She  is  rarely,  except  in  love, 
wholly  penetrated  by  that  which  occupies 
her.  It  is  then  easier  for  her  to  be  consid- 
erate, to  look  about  continuously  upon  all 
sides.  She  is  more  mobile,  more  quickly 
sensitive,  more  manysided  and  more  sup- 

73 


pie  than  man,  and  therein  lies  her 
strength.  But  just  as  that  of  man,  it  is 
bought  at  the  price  of  corresponding 
weakness.  For  equipoise  is  still  so  difficult 
in  human  nature  that  a  good  quality  is 
often  not  the  product  of  a  multiplication, 
but  is  the  remainder  after  a  subtraction. 

The  man  becomes  thus  especially  crea- 
tive through  his  greater  courage  to  dare, 
his  more  intense  power  to  will;  the  woman 
becomes  the  often  anxious  conservator. 
She  cherishes  with  fidelity,  not  only  the 
customs  and  memories  of  the  home,  but 
also  society's  traditional  sentiments  and 
conceptions  of  right.  But  this  very  con- 
spicuous conservatism  of  the  woman  is 
exactly  that  which  has  obstructed  the  de- 
velopment of  exceptional  femininity. 

The  personal  independence  of  man  is 
hampered  because  he  must  work  ordi- 
narily in  close  association  with  others; 
whereby  he  is  bound  by  party  discipline 
and  party  spirit,  by  considerations  for 
preferment  or  other  interests. 

The  personality  of  woman  on  the  other 
hand  is  more  fettered  by  conventional  con- 

74 


ceptions  of  morality  and  a  conventional 
ideal  of  woman.  She  will  not  distinguish 
the  self-sacrifice  which  is  of  value  from 
that  which  from  all  points  of  view  is  value- 
less. She  does  not  rely  upon  her  own  in- 
stinct for  right  if  this  instinct  deviates 
only  a  hair's  breadth  from  the  generally 
accepted  idea.  She  pardons  the  one  who 
sins  against  established  conceptions  of 
right,  provided  only  he  recognizes  their 
validity;  but  she  condemns  the  one  who 
has  acted  contrary  to  this  conception  in 
sincere  conviction,  because  his  idea  of 
right  differs  from  that  of  the  majority! 
She  confounds  in  her  judgment  tempera- 
ment and  opinions,  doctrine  and  life  —  a 
confusion  which  is  the  origin  of  all  spir- 
itual tyranny,  of  all  social  intolerance. 
Especially  does  this  obtain  in  questions 
which  concern  the  relation  of  the  sexes. 
Every  one  who  expresses  an  opinion  at 
variance  with  the  conventional  ideal  of 
morality  has  then  incurred  intrusive  con- 
clusions and  blasting  defamation  of  his 
private  life.  On  the  part  of  women  then  — 
if  it  is  a  question  concerning  a  woman  —  it 

75 


must  all  the  more  be  accepted  that  it 
requires  not  only  a  glowing  red  belief  but 
also  a  snow-white  conscience  to  dare  defy 
society  in  its  most  sensitive  prejudices. 

Conventionality  of  the  woman  attains 
its  culminating  point  in  the  thoughtless 
and  conscienceless  repetition  of  others' 
words  by  which  most  women  lower  their 
spiritual  level,  distort,  disfigure  their  char- 
acter and  eventually  stultify  their  person- 
ality. 

A  woman  who  makes  any  pretensions 
to  fineness,  evinces  this  among  other 
things,  by  avoiding  all  borrowed  or  sham 
luxury.  She  scorns  spurious  effects,  tin- 
sel, and  disdains  therefore  in  her  dress 
and  her  home  all  artificial  ornamentation. 

But  this  same  woman  utters  boldly 
counterfeited  opinions  and  spurious  judg- 
ments as  her  own.  Even  if  she  possesses 
it  she  dare  not  express  a  fresh,  original 
opinion,  a  warm  direct  feeling.  And  her 
forgeries  are  then  transmitted  by  other 
plagarists  from  circle  to  circle.  Thus 
"Public  Opinion"  is  formed  upon  the  most 
delicate  life  problems,  the  most  serious 

76 


life  work.  Thus  the  most  noble  actions 
become  dubious  and  the  vilest  calumnies 
positive  authentic  truths.  Thus  the  air 
becomes  congested  with  the  grains  of 
sand,  under  which  a  man's  works  of  honor 
are  buried. 

But  a  work  or  a  renown  which  has  been 
interred  can  be  exhumed.  It  is  the  blind 
re-echoers  of  others'  words,  themselves, 
who  must  at  length  disappear  forever. 


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